Thursday, February 26, 2015

Skywald Publications was the work of Sol Brodsky & Israel Waldman. While they had a small run of color comics designed to imitate Marvel, their biggest output and claim to fame were their B&W "Horror-Mood" magazines, done very much in the mode of James Warren's CREEPY and EERIE.

Al Hewetson, a writer & editor, soon joined the company and eventually became full editor when Brodsky returned to Marvel. Hewetson determined to give Skywald's horror line a more "literate" feel than Warren's had, resulting in, among other things, no less than 19 Edgar Allan Poe adaptations between 1972-75.

Eternity Comics, for a few years, was a very successful small
publisher, who split their output between a number of original series,
licensed series, and reprints of old comics. This included quite of few
of the Poe stories from Skywald! "The Murders In The Rue Morgue" was reprinted here. (Isn't is STUPID that they reveal the solution to the murder mystery right there on the cover???)

EDGAR ALLAN POE: THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE And Other Stories #1
cover by BROOKS HAGAN (Eternity Comics / March 1989)

Copyright (C) Skywald Publications.

Scan of SCREAM #10 cover from the GCD site.
Scans of SCREAM #10 interiors supplied by Cully Callaway
with special thanks
and from the Tebeos de Factura Hispana 2 blog.
Special thanks to Jose Ruiz DelAmor.
Scan of THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE And Other Stories #1
from the GCD site.

Friday, February 20, 2015

Skywald Publications was the work of Sol Brodsky & Israel Waldman. While they had a small run of color comics designed to imitate Marvel, their biggest output and claim to fame were their B&W "Horror-Mood" magazines, done very much in the mode of James Warren's CREEPY and EERIE.

Al Hewetson, a writer & editor, soon joined the company and eventually became full editor when Brodsky returned to Marvel. Hewetson determined to give Skywald's horror line a more "literate" feel than Warren's had, resulting in, among other things, no less than 19 Edgar Allan Poe adaptations between 1972-75.

Eerie Publications was one of the companies set up by el cheapo schlockmeister Myron Fass (infamously of M.F. Enterprises, who put out the android "Captain Marvel" who yelled "SPLIT!" --and then did). While clearly meant to imitate and compete with the glorious James Warren B&W horror comics magazines (CREEPY, EERIE,
etc.), the byword for these was "tacky". On every level. Instead of
trying to raise the bar on quality of art and writing, these seem more
aimed at the lowest possible dominator, kids who could take a perverse
pleasure in being able to read shocking, brutally violent stuff that
made the worst excesses of the early-1950s seem tame by comparison.

The story in question is the relatively obscure...

"THE DEAD LIVE".

This, in fact, is a redo of a story called "BURIED ALIVE" from Prize's BLACK MAGIC #28 (Jan-Feb'54), with the art REDRAWN. You read that right. Allow me to quote from the THIS IS HORROR blog...

"Eerie Publications began by printing black and white versions of the
pre-code horror comics from the 50s that were out of print and therefore
in the public domain. They would slap a new cover on the comic and
touch up the old artwork to make it more gory. This worked quite well
for a time, as they were sold as magazines and not comics, so weren’t
subject to the same censorship that had killed horror comics fifteen
years before. After a while though, Fass began to run out of old horror
comics to pilfer and the fifties fashions and styles looked a little
dated by the dawn of the groovy 70s. Undaunted, Fass simply hired a
bunch of cheap and hungry (but exceptionally talented) artists from
South America to redraw the same stories with seventies hair cuts and a
gallon or two more gore. Sometimes the same story would be redrawn up to
three times by different artists to varying effect."

Having explained that, I shall further tell you that this story is actually an adaptation of Poe's "THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER", with elements of "THE PREMATURE BURIAL" thrown in for good measure!

Since the art is all-new, I'm going to count this as a "new" adaptation for each of the stories it involves.

I don't think I actually have even a single one of these in my entire collection. In fact, frankly, I'm surprised that a POE
story even turned up in any of them. But, it
did!!

WEIRD v8 4
cover by BILL ALEXANDER (Eerie Publications / August 1974)

"THE DEAD LIVE"

(adapted from "THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER") / Version 13

(including elements of "THE PREMATURE BURIAL") / Version 5

Adaptation by Jack Oleck / New Art by CIRILO MUNOZ / Page 20

Page 21

Page 22

Page 23

Page 24

Page 25

Page 26

"The Dead Live" was reprinted twice in later Eerie Publications issues...

"THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER":
Read about Basil Rathbone at Wikipedia.
Read about THE WEIRD CIRCLE radio show at Wikipedia.
Read about Gladys Thornton at the IMDB site.
Read about the ESCAPE radio show at Wikipedia.
Read about Paul Free at Wikipedia.
Read about THE CBS RADIO MYSTERY THEATER at Wikipedia.
Read about Kevin McCarthy at Wikipedia.
Read about Arnold Moss at Wikipedia.

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Okay, we've got a weird one here. I ran across this by accident (it happens), and have been trying to piece together as much information about it as I can. Some of which may not be accurate. So anyone reading this page would do well to consider it a "work in progress".

"EL EXTRANO CASO DEL SENOR VALDEMAR" is, obviously, a Spanish version of Poe's "THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR".

The artist involved is Carlos Gimenez, who apparently is one of the most highly-revered in all of Spain, but has only a very limited amount of his work published in America. Well, I'm working to "fix" that right now!

This story, as near as I can make out (it's difficult to be sure when I'm dealing with a confusing Google translation, and virtually NO information at all at the GCD site) appeared in TRINCA, an expensive, high-quality magazine whose high price kept it from achieving financial success. Much of the magazine's contents appear to have been adaptations of "classic" stories, and it was also the original home for such series as "Haxtur" and "El Cid", which later saw print in Warren's EERIE magazine!

According to Wikipedia, Carlos Gimenez was "most proud" of his horror stories, "The Miserere", and "Valdemar", and both were done for TRINCA. Another Wikipedia pages lists some of the contents of the series, and Gimenez' work turns up in issue #8. So that's what I'm listing here! As it turns out, while it was intended for TRINCA, it did not actually appear there...

From the Tebeosfera site:
"Another story was adapted Poe, in 1971, in "The Strange Case of M. Valdemar" also aimed at TRINCA but for reasons of censorship was not released until 1976."

As an aside, during the period when TRINCA did not publish this story in Spain, VAMPUS did see fit to reprint all 3 of Reed Candall's POE stories (in Spain). One might wonder, why Warren never bothered to publish Gimenez' version of "Valdemar", instead choosing to do their own-- albeit, with a different Spanish artist?

TRINCA 8
cover by ?? (Doncel / Spain / 1971)

On October 4, 2016, I finally ran across the cover of the magazine this story appeared in!

As a further bonus, I decided to use Google Translate to help me create an ENGLISH-language version of this story! Enjoy!!

Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4

Page 5

Page 6

Copyright (C) 1971 Carlos Gimenez.

English translation text Copyright (C) 2015 Henry Kujawa.

Scan of TRINCA #8 from the GCD site.
Scan of CLUB AMIGOS DE LA HISTORIAS #16 cover
from the Tebeosfera site.
Scans of CLUB AMIGOS DE LA HISTORIAS #16 interiors
from the Kerlames blogspot (pages 1, 2, 4 & 5),
from Pinterest (page 3),
and from the Afilactera site (page 6).
Special thanks to Susanna Malaguti for clueing me in about this story
and Giovanni Clavijo Castillo (Kerlames blog) for most of the scans!!
Scan of ALMANAQUE DO MUNDO DE AVENTURAS 1983
from the Phantomwiki site.
Scans of SABOR A MENTA Y OTRAS HISTORIAS from the Kerlames blogspot.

Read about Trinca at Wikipedia.
Read about Carlos Gimenez at Wikipedia.
Read about Carlos Gimenez at the Tebeosfera site.
Read about Sabor A Menta Y Otras Historias (reprint collection)
at the Carlos Gimenez website.

Read about Basil Rathbone at Wikipedia.
Read about THE WEIRD CIRCLE radio show at Wikipedia.
Read about THE CBS RADIO MYSTERY THEATER at Wikipedia.

Read about THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR at Wikipedia.
Read the complete story at the Poe Stories site.